Farewell To My Hero And The Yellow Rose Of Texas

Today I am very sad. Ann Richards, Former Governor of the State of Texas passed away yesterday evening. I have always and will forever more love that silver tongued, silver haired, take no prisoners give um hell and tell it just like it is woman! Yet she had more class in her little finger than most people can acquire in a lifetime. Ann Richards always said; “ I don’t want my tombstone to read She kept a really clean house”, in my heart and mind she will forever be remembered as a strong courageous come from behind woman who opened up politics to everyone! Especially, woman and minorities.

When she was Texas State Treasurer she won the hearts of many when she reminded us all that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels!

As governor, she appointed the first black University of Texas regent, the first crime victim on the state Criminal Justice Board, the first disabled person on the human services board and the first teacher to lead the State Board of Education.

Under Richards, the fabled Texas Rangers pinned stars on their first black and female officers.


Ann grew up near Waco, married civil rights lawyer David Richards and spent her early adulthood volunteering in campaigns and raising four children. She often said the hardest job she ever had was as a public school teacher at Fulmore Junior High School in Austin.
In the early 1960s, she helped form the North Dallas Democratic Women, "basically to allow us to have something substantive to do; the regular Democratic Party and its organization was run by men who looked on women as little more than machine parts."

Richards served on the Travis County Commissioners Court in Austin for six years before jumping to a bigger arena in 1982 when her election as state treasurer made her the first woman elected statewide in nearly 50 years.

But politics took a toll. It cost her a marriage and forced her in 1980 to seek treatment for alcoholism. "I had seen the very bottom of life," she once recalled. "I was so afraid I wouldn't be funny anymore. I just knew that I would lose my zaniness and my sense of humor. But I didn't.

Recovery turned out to be a wonderful thing." Richards said she never missed being in public office. She grinned when asked what she might have done differently had she known she would be a one-term governor.

"Oh," she said, "I would probably have raised more hell.”


"I've always said in politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill ya everytime!" - Ann Richards

“I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.” - Ann Richards

"Poor George [Bush], he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth" - Ann Richards



Ann, you will forever be the yellow rose in my heart and soul. We will miss you Ann!